Katie Holmes blindsided Tom Cruise with divorce papers in the last day or two, and many speculate that she wants to protect her daughter Siri from being dragged into Scientology.

Now, I always wondered what possessed her to marry into Scientology in the first place, but it's heartening that her duty as a mom has come ahead of being married to Cruise, which has undoubtedly been a boost to her own career.

I really don't get how anyone can take a religion seriously knowing it was invented by a sci-fi writer and has a theology involving space aliens. But, when you get right down to it, is it that much wackier than Christianity?

(My apologies to TA for posting in Small Talk, having been told to try to post in the more specific categories, but this does seem to be a Small Talk kind of item, though I'm willing to listen to any suggestions of a better category. Perhaps we need a category devoted to entertainment topics. If TA had one, I would have posted there.)

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One of the people who brought those secrets to the outside world is an ex-Scientologist named Dennis Erlich.

I asked Erlich to describe for us, very briefly, the whole progression that a church member goes through, from beginner to the highest levels of Operating Thetan as Scientologists move up what they call "The Bridge to Total Freedom":

"The mental reprogramming begins with the basic courses and early one-on-one sessions," Erlich says. "These sessions train the individual to expect to have his communication, attention, and body completely controlled by the practitioner (auditor) without objecting. In later sessions, his attention is directed inwardly to parts of his so-called reactive mind. The auditor's commands guide the individual to areas which, according to the tech, release native abilities trapped in earlier unpleasant experiences that he has failed to completely 'confront.' After going through all the mental training processes, step by step, up the 'bridge' to the state of clear, one has erased the reactive mind and is returned to an 'unaberrated' state of healthy mind and body.

"Continuing up toward higher states than clear one reaches the level of Operating Thetan III, and learns that it has not been one's own reactive mind that has been causing the pain, negative emotions, or inabilities, but rather the reactive minds of the thousands and thousands of other individual spirits who are also inhabiting one's body and thinking one's thoughts. These alien spirits, one is told, were brought to Earth (then named Teegeeack) 76 million years ago by the evil galactic emperor Xenu, placed around volcanoes, blown up with hydrogen bombs and then implanted with 36 days of false memories -- including Christianity, and everything else upon which modern society is based. All human problems allegedly stem from this 'Wall of Fire' incident and the subsequent possession of humans by these 'body thetans.'

"The remainder of the 'Bridge to Total Freedom' consists of various exorcism techniques which address the health and spiritual problems inherent in alien possession."

This, from the latter link above, for those unfamiliar with the basic tenants of Scientology:

If you're new to Scientology watching, you may have some basic understanding that church members are taught that we are immortal beings who have lost a sense of our true nature, and through church founder L. Ron Hubbard's 'auditing' we can wipe away the fog of countless lifetimes of trauma and become 'clear.' Then, moving along increasingly more expensive levels of auditing (also known as Hubbard's 'technology' or 'tech'), we can perfect the ability to 'exteriorize' from our mundane bodies and get more control over our immortal inner 'thetan.' This process of increasing control and power is known as 'the Bridge' and can cost years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to ascend.